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A Dumb Idea I Had

…no university should ever be as beholden to its football program as Penn State was. At other big-time sports schools, there are all kinds of daily hypocrisies that people avert their eyes from in the name of college football or men’s basketball. Sadly, we accept these hypocrisies as the price to be paid for the money college sports generates and the entertainment it provides. But at Penn State, football was of such overweening importance — and Paterno was such a godlike figure — that a sexual predator was allowed to roam free…

You might have heard (click through the link above) that the N.C.A.A. just dropped a raft of punishments on the athletic program of Caltech, an apparently august engineering university with decidedly less-than august sports teams. This is the opposite of what it is likely to do to Penn State, even though at Caltech the rules violations seem to pale next to lurid stories of a pervert’s being given free rein in the football team locker room.

Indeed, the N.C.A.A. seemed to do next to nothing after appalling breaches at Ohio State, the disturbingly repetitive career of John Calipari and the baldly corrupt recruiting of Cam Newton. Not that any of that matters.

But how about a punishment for the N.C.A.A.? How about a “death penalty” for the N.C.A.A.? Blot out that dumb blue N.C.A.A. logo. Stop wearing clothes that have it, or cover it with a small piece of black electrical tape. Don’t take pictures of it. Don’t stand next to it. Stop saying the abbreviation.

Footnotes

“And the LORD repented of the evil which he thought to do to his people.” – Exodus 32:14.

“Even then,
When two mouths, thirsty each for each, find slaking,
And agony's forgot, and hushed the crying
Of credulous hearts, in heaven -- such are but taking
Their own poor dreams within their arms, and lying
Each in his lonely night, each with a ghost.” -- Rupert Brooke, 1913

“Unconceivable, unbelievable; Grammar like a hammer information receivable; Sent by the Lord, here and abroad; with words well adored now they can't be ignored!” Run DMC, “Tougher Than Leather”

“...some small boys came out of the city and jeered at him, saying, ‘Go up, you baldhead! Go up, you baldhead!’ And he turned around, and when he saw them, he cursed them in the name of the LORD. And two she-bears came out of the woods and tore forty-two of the boys.” -- 2 Kings 2:23-24

"You don't get it, do you? This isn't 'good cop, bad cop.' This is fag and New Yorker. You're in a lot of trouble."